


The Beginning of Everything

by renneroo



Category: Welcome to Sanditon
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-17
Updated: 2013-06-17
Packaged: 2017-12-15 07:15:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/846801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renneroo/pseuds/renneroo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All things have a beginning, a first. Somehow, every step along the way is something new, a blind step into something bigger than either of them ever imagined. This is the story of Edward Denham, Clara Breton, and the small steps along the way that spun their lives into one story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Beginning of Everything

                  

_I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it's these things I'd believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn't all she should be. I love her and it is the beginning of everything.- F. Scott Fitzgerald_

* * *

 

      The first memory Ed Denham had of Clara Breton was really a vague patchwork of images from his first day of kindergarten. They were in Ms. Tomson’s class, and Ed could vaguely remember walking into the pale yellow room full of tables, cubbies, and carpet. The walls were almost completely covered, the yellow walls peeking through multicolored posters and pieces of furniture. When his aunt dropped him off, he was still the third child to get there, far more punctual than he would make a habit of later in life. Altogether, it didn’t look that different than the daycare that had been familiar to him up to that point, except for the lack of babies in the room. He wasn’t particularly nervous, but as the initial shock from the slight change in setting began to wear off, he was lulled into the space-cadet dreamland where he spent most of his time. He observed his surroundings in a half-interested manner, wondering what would was coming next and what being in real school would be like. He wondered what he would learn about and when he would finally get to read chapter books instead of the baby books with too many pictures and not enough words.

                  The first kid he would meet was Tommy, who sat by himself in the corner with a collection of hoarded toy cars. He was odd, perhaps even more of a space cadet than Ed himself, the only one who would prove to be such. He was altogether odd, and Ed always wondered what it was about him that seemed wrong or just a little bit off. He was so different. Even at five, Edward was somewhat accustomed to not being like all the other kids his age, but peculiarity was all that he and Tommy ever had in common. For the life of him, he couldn’t say what exactly had become of Tommy recently. All he knew was that the last time he distinctly remembered Tommy being there was when they were in the same third grade class. Sometimes he wondered if any of the guys on the street he passed on his way to the mayor’s office were weird Tommy from the first day of kindergarten. He figured that somewhere along the way, Tommy had been taken into the world of deviance and truancy.

                  The second was a five-year-old Clara Breton in a blue dress with curly pigtails. He remembered thinking that she must have gotten new clothes especially for school because she looked all clean and done up, ready to be in big kid school for the first time.

                  Ed’s aunt hadn’t taken him school shopping. School supplies were provided for kindergarteners, and he realized through the years that even if she got him new clothes before school started, he probably would’ve refused to wear them anyway. He grew used to interacting with people and life in such a way. Everything was always bright, fresh, new, and colorful, and he stood in the corner and watched, fine with standing out the outside. Edward, as he was called at the time, sat down at one of the empty tables and picked at his fingernails, watching the other children shuffle through the door clinging to their parents’ leg.

                  As he sat thinking about Star Wars, which he had just seen for the first time two weeks ago, imagining himself wielding a lightsaber, the epic adventure inside his mind was interrupted by the girl in the blue dress and sparklingly white shoes patted his shoulder. When he turned around in as disgruntled a manner as any five year old can muster, she wore a cheesy grin as she introduced herself.

                  “Hi, I’m Clara. I like your shoes. What’s your name?”

                  Edward examined the aforementioned shoes, gleaming with a shiny Batman logo that lit up when he stomped on it. He gave one foot a solid stomp on the ground, in part to show off the full range of his footwear’s capabilities and simply because he had a hankering to see the Batman symbol lit up himself. At first Clara jumped a little bit, not expecting such an outburst. She was frightened by the outburst of fury from the boy who had been so quiet, but once she saw the flashing lights coming from his grey shoes, she broke into giggles. Ed couldn’t help but grin just a little bit too, and without much warning, he let out a few more stomps to keep it going, before hopping up on both feet and giving a great big jump, his feet landing firmly on the ground, setting off the lights on his shoes one more time. When Edward looked up at Clara, he saw the teacher looking at him with narrowed eyes and the rest of the kids in the room, now far surpassing the two that were there at the beginning, all seemed to be staring at him wide-eyed.

                  His cheeks tinged a pink, and his neck felt flushed. He all of a sudden wished he had something to hide behind. With eyes on the verge of tearing up, Edward sat back down, feeling a little ashamed of himself. Like most kids, Edward didn’t like being in trouble. His aunt had a tendency to be particularly nasty when he got in trouble, and Ed pictured his teacher acting like his aunt when she was angry. When his aunt wasn’t happy, she made sure that no one was happy, which usually resulted in Edward s. The teacher, however, simply went back to where she was finishing up decorating the bulletin board at the front of the classroom by the door, with a picture of a school bus and the names of all the children in the class without as much as a word to Edward about the outburst. The other children had quickly gone back to inspecting the classroom and playing with the toys. Edward retreated back into his usual shy manner, but as the rest of the world began turning again with everything returning to normal after the abrupt interruption, Clara smiled at the little boy whose name she didn’t know before turning towards the rest of the kids where she played until the starting bell finally rang.

                  Once school had officially started, Ms. Tomson had them all sit in a big circle on the floor and pass around the talking ball to learn everyone’s name. They went on to do their first worksheet, and after nap time, to which Ed had heartily dissented believing himself too big to still be taking naps, Ms. Tomson taught them all about aardvarks. When his aunt asked him how his first day at school went, Edward surpassed everything that had happened before the bell rang and went right into talking incredulously about how kindergarten still had nap time, which seemed terribly wrong to him.

                  He could remember that Clara tried to approach him the next day during lunch, but he had the distinct memory of gathering his lunch closer towards him and ignoring everyone else, including the little girl who had given up on trying to greet him and instead sat next to him, happily eating her own lunch despite his determination to remain isolated. She only attempted sitting with him a few other times. At some point, he thinks she gave up and went to sit with the group of kids next to him, whom he could only remember as far too loud and boisterous over their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for him to really like. Clara was always a little quieter than most of them, though she was still quite social, particularly in comparison to Edward. Altogether though, Edward didn’t complain as much about Clara as he did Emily, the little girl who always shrieked too loud and talked too much.

                  Though he couldn’t remember it in his adult years, every time he donned his Batman shoes, that little girl would smile, and despite the fact that he couldn’t tell you why at the age of twenty-five, long after they had worn out and a vague recollection of them was all that remained, those shoes had become his favorite and the staple of his wardrobe at that age. Well through middle school, Ed had a preference for Batman above other superheroes, and even with a list of reasons for his superiority, a part of it always had to do with his favorite pair of shoes when he was little.


End file.
